How we’ll get a gigabit to US hospitals, libraries, colleges

The government has endorsed a bold plan to bring 1Gbps to more than 200,000 …

One key recommendation in the National Broadband Plan was that the government support a scheme to wire hundreds of thousands of "anchor institutions" with 1Gbps fiber. The move would mean that schools, libraries, colleges, and community centers in every town in the country could eventually have a fat pipe and a future-proof fiber connection.

Not only that: both the FCC and the plan's backers envision the system being used to push faster broadband out into the surrounding community. The only question is how to pay for it all.

A gigabit available to everyone

A few institutions—mostly research universities—already have this sort of speed through projects like Internet2 and National LambdaRail, but these are "a few isolated examples," says John Windhausen, who heads the Schools, Health, and Libraries Broadband Coalition. Out of more than 213,000 anchor locations scattered across the country, only a couple hundred have true next-gen connectivity.

Extend 1Gbps service to every school, library, and college, goes the thinking, and two key things happen. First, every city in the country suddenly has a truly high-speed Internet access point. This is most important for libraries, which often serve the Internet's unserved.

Bob Bocher, who works as a consultant with the Wisconsin State Library, says, "The more than 16,000 public libraries across the country are often the only places in their communities that offer no-fee Internet access to all residents. Like many community anchor institutions, the bandwidth needs of our libraries continue to expand at exponential rates, and for most libraries their bandwidth needs can only be met by fiber connectivity. Fiber gets our libraries to the future, faster."

Libraries have complained for years about their inability to keep up with demand for broadband; earlier this year, the American Library Association said that 60 percent of US libraries "report their connectivity speed is inadequate some or all of the time to meet patrons' needs." Even when the money is available to pay for a fatter pipe, more bandwidth might not be available.

Extending the network... to your house

But the anchor institutions are pushing a second key benefit of 1Gbps access. Such speed should be enough to meet a particular site's needs with enough bandwidth left over to serve local communities. Windhausen and others have been pushing this vision to the FCC, which bought into it in the National Broadband Plan.

Obvious obstacles exist to this plan, especially if the local government itself extends the network into the local community. Such municipal networks have been challenged in court and in legislatures across the country, usually by incumbent cable companies and telcos who argue that this is unfair competition. It's pretty clear what the current FCC thinks, though. From the Plan comes the following case study:

Bristol, Va., provides a good example of the potential of community broadband in rural America. This small town, which also operates the local electric utility, initially deployed a fiber optic network to connect its government, electric utility and school buildings. Local businesses and residents expressed interest in connecting to this high-speed network, so Bristol made plans to build a fiber-to-the-premises network. After overcoming a series of state legislative barriers and legal challenges by incumbent providers offering slower services, Bristol launched a FTTP service. Today 62 percent of Bristol’s residents and businesses subscribe to the service despite competition from the incumbent telephone company and cable.

A community's anchor institutions thus become, in essence, colocation facilities offering middle-mile access to the last-mile ISPs who extend the lines into the community. This can be done by the government (as in Bristol's case), but it doesn't have to be. As Windhausen tells Ars, there are "are all kinds of different ways that this capacity gets provided." It could be municipalities, it could be private ISPs, it could be the state or regional education networks that will likely wire up the anchor institutions.

This is happening in a very limited fashion at the moment. Many of the winning grant applications for broadband stimulus money are middle-mile applications, and the government has required grant winners to be open to all last-mile providers. But this is quite limited in impact; the new proposal is far more ambitious, extending this to more than 200,000 local institutions, which could also pool resources to get bulk deals on both hardware and bandwidth.

All of this would be made possible by the proposed Unified Community Anchor Network (UCAN), which would do the wiring. UCAN would not reinvent the wheel; where existing networks like Internet2 exist, they would be used or better interconnected. In addition, 30 states have state-level education networks. These could then be expanded to local anchor institutions.

In places where such networks are sparse or absent, UCAN envisions building out new network capacity to link up the schools, hospitals, and community centers.

Sounds great! How do we fund it?

Paying for UCAN is an unsolved problem, however. The National Broadband Plan avoids getting into funding details, instead suggesting that the idea is terrific and should be funded. How? Not even the idea's backers know.

"We have not come to agreement yet on how it should be funded," says Windhausen. "It's a big open question."

All the stakeholders are gathering in April to hash out their proposed solution, which could involve leftover broadband stimulus money, additional funding requests to Congress, and consolidating many federal programs into UCAN support.

Without a funding model, are the biggest battles still to come? Windhausen insists that the FCC's endorsement was a "huge win" for his group. Paying for the scheme remains an obvious stumbling block, but conceptual support is now in place.

I've seen this type of "anchor institution" first-hand. The rural school I went to manged to get fiber, which enabled Verizon to offer DSL within 2 miles or so (granted I lived 10 miles away, so I was stuck with dial-up).

(Side note, you can't delete your own post? I accidentally posted and wanted to delete it while I wrote my actual post.)

I'm struggling with the need for a library to have a huge pipe coming into it. Whether that's GB or even Fiber type speeds. Okay, I kind of get the vision of that access somehow magically being made available outside the walls of the institution, but what, really, is the need, inside the library. If they have a couple dozen free-access terminals, what would their total bandwidth needs really be? And for a smaller community, do they even have a couple of dozen terminals available?

In addition to the WiFi access inside a library, they could put a powerful 802.11n mesh-capable antenna on the roof. Anyone living in beam range could then access the network, and maybe help pay for the maintenance costs with some kind of "outside access" fee. It could be encrypted and authenticated via something like RADIUS. A local non-profit 501(c)(12) Cooperative Telecommunications Utility could also help with the setup and subscription management.

I'm struggling with the need for a library to have a huge pipe coming into it. Whether that's GB or even Fiber type speeds. Okay, I kind of get the vision of that access somehow magically being made available outside the walls of the institution, but what, really, is the need, inside the library. If they have a couple dozen free-access terminals, what would their total bandwidth needs really be? And for a smaller community, do they even have a couple of dozen terminals available?

Same argument can be said for regular homes who really needs a 1gb line to their home or 100mb for that matter.

The reason is because the world consumes alot of media which require high speed connections.

Library internet connections are also not just used for doing research they are also used for leisure such as video and some browser games both requiring decent connections.

Now think of this a library with several dozen terminals with users both doing research and media consumption.

And now look at the current connections to libraries t3 lines. Slow and expensive for serving these amount of users.

What i'm saying is its a bit selfish to say oh we need 200mbps+ to the home but under the same breath say oh why do libraries need such a fast connection.

- bid out connections to residents in area groups. Standardized use of type and fiber and connectors. Can be bid on incumbants (telcos and cable).

- bid out maintenance of lines.

- backbone is run as a non-profit

- use is charged as a per GB structure to everyone connecting

- any company can sell content usage to end users as a bundle or any part of it. End user part is commercialized

What this would do:

- very high competitive pressures- standardized cost for everyone in the USA- Government would pay for the use of some agencies- simplify everything to known expectations and responsibilities- use competition for positive results by keeping the playing field level

I'm struggling with the need for a library to have a huge pipe coming into it. Whether that's GB or even Fiber type speeds. Okay, I kind of get the vision of that access somehow magically being made available outside the walls of the institution, but what, really, is the need, inside the library. If they have a couple dozen free-access terminals, what would their total bandwidth needs really be? And for a smaller community, do they even have a couple of dozen terminals available?

Have you been to your local library lately? In mine, the computers are pretty much always in use. There is a reservation system and it's often booked up for days in advance. I have no idea what my library's aggregate bandwidth is, but when I have sat down at a terminal, internet seemed quite slow. It's not alone - according to the article, 60% of public libraries have this problem.

As to number of terminals available, I have no idea what the statistics are, but if bandwidth to the library is solved, this doesn't seem to be a very hard problem. Terminals can be donated, or provided through corporate sponsorships, or purchased incrementally whenever the budget has a few hundred dollars to spare (a "terminal" is, after all, really just a PC, and it doesn't have to be a high end gamer machine). Wireless can be installed so that people can bring their own computers. I'm sure this just barely scratches the surface of the possibilities available.

The Gates Foundation estimated (see page ten) that every library that doesn't already have fiber, could have it installed for a total cost under two billion dollars.

Most hospitals, libraries, and probably 98%+ of the universities already have dedicated internet access. By dedicated I mean VLAN or TLS, not shared broadband like DSL. In most cases, some of their dedicated bandwidth is carved out for metro or region LAN connection, and some for internet access.

As a telecommunications network planner, my experience is that many universities already have more than a 1 Gb/s pipe to the world, many hospitals have between 100 Mb/s and 1 Gb/s, and many libraries are happily getting by on 5 Mb/s to 20 Mb/s dedicated connections.

In addition to the WiFi access inside a library, they could put a powerful 802.11n mesh-capable antenna on the roof.

How are you going to deal with interference from other, privately-held 802.11n devices? How are you going to prevent your 802.11n network from interfering with other devices in the 2.4GHz spectrum, aside from using 5GHz? What's the real-world performance of the 5GHz mode in cities and versus weather? Are there other devices in the 5GHz band that might interfere with your 802.11n mesh network?

Wireless is cool and useful, but there are very real practical difficulties with widespread implementation, particularly if you're using license-free bands to do the job. It may be cheaper to deploy than wire/fiber, but that's not necessarily the same thing as wireless being the better solution.

Two reasons libraries need broadband: As government-citizen interactions increasingly move online, libraries serve as the intermediary between them (downloading and filling out forms, applications, etc.). And in some communities, libraries have come to serve as de-facto emergency response centers - see for example what's been going on in Florida: http://plhurricanes.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... gency.html

They'll put a charge on everyone who has broadband service, just like the telephone tax. I'm willing to bet on it.

Which is unfortunate. This isn't a federal problem - let the states pay for it.

I actually agree with this...the state-paying part. States are required to only use money they have. The federal gov't would just take out another loan and bloat the deficit on this. Since a lot of states are currently low on budget, we won't see this for a while then.

Plus, if my tax dollars are going to pay for something like this, then I'd like some discounts on my medical service or college education for places I'm funding. Fat chance in hell of that happening, but really, tax payers pay for a lot of stuff they never see an advantage from.

Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent, The Passage, and The Signing of this Healthcare Reform Bill, is a Major Victory for the American People, and a Historic Achievement for President Obama's Presidency.

[major snippage]

A press release or advertisement would probably be more appropriately directed to ars' advertising staff. Even if not there, your post violates more than one of the posting guidelines here, and has not added anything to the discussion on this topic beyond my sense that I never, ever, want to hear from or deal with Compuline International again.